Taunton on cusp of landing two new companies; developer cites taxes, red tape as obstacles

Saturday

Jan 25, 2014 at 10:36 PMJan 25, 2014 at 10:43 PM

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

Louis Ricciardi says Taunton's Myles Standish Industrial Park, recognized as one of the Bay State's premier industrial parks, is on track to developing its final two property phases, known numerically as four and five.

But he also said if Taunton wants to continue competing with other municipalities vying for new economic development and investment, it needs to further adjust its tax rate in favor of those interests.

Ricciardi, president of the nonprofit Taunton Development Corporation, said the TDC and its partner — finance and development agency MassDevelopment — have been negotiating with two companies interested in locating within one of the final two land phases.

He's optimistic closing papers will be signed and passed for either a lease or purchase agreement by spring. Ricciardi declined to identify the two parties at this time.

"We're well into negotiating right now," he explained.

Going through the process of permitting and engineering, Ricciardi said, can take "an unbelievable amount of time."

Those "layers of approval," he said, "definitely adds a cost" to a company's project.

He doesn't blame anyone in particular for what he says has been a 20-year trend in Massachusetts of added red tape, that ostensibly exists to ensure greater compliance with a number of considerations, ranging from wetlands conservation to sidewalk installation.

"I would assume they're there to help," he laughed. "Some of the reasons are understandable and some are hard to understand."

Ricciardi said the two companies are among "more than half a dozen" businesses "with active interest" in settling into the park's final phases.

Myles Standish Industrial Park, at last count, according to Ricciardi, had 98 companies and 6,225 employees.

The smaller Liberty & Union Industrial Park in East Taunton has 11 companies — which includes the sizeable Jordan's Furniture corporate and distribution facility — and a total of 809 workers, he said.

MassDevelopment and the TDC formed a partnership in 2012, creating what is now known as Taunton Development/MassDevelopment Corp., or TD/MDC for short. The Boston agency was instrumental in negotiating an agreement for TDC with the state to transfer 220 acres of surplus land abutting MSIP for phases four and five.

That state surplus property had formerly been known as Paul A. Dever State School, which for years provided housing and care to people with severe learning and intellectual disabilities. In the 1940s the property was known as the U.S. Army's Camp Myles Standish.

The cost to demolish buildings and clean up contamination from the Dever campus site, which contains a network of underground tunnels, has been put at $25 million.

A life-science training center and campus, to be called Taunton Education and Training Center, is going to be built mainly within phase five, according to Ricciardi.

That project is part of the state's 10-year, $1 billion life sciences initiative to provide bio-tech and technology oriented companies with qualified workers.

Ricciardi said it was a positive step when Taunton's City Council in November approved a property tax ratio, that slightly shifts the burden away from businesses to residential property owners.

But even with the new tax ratio for fiscal 2014, he said the TDC is at a disadvantage compared to other, highly competitive cities and towns, such as Middleboro, Fall River and Franklin.

"We still have the best park in the state, but it's (tax rates) definitely been a factor we hear about," he said.

Ricciardi said MSIP, besides easy access to Interstate 495, benefits from reasonable utility rates from Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant and top-notch infrastructure service from the city's department of public works.

But, he says, whereas in years past Taunton was ranked in the middle of the pack in terms of an attractive tax rate for businesses, it has allowed itself to become one of the two or three most expensive in that regard.

Ricciardi says that's particularly relevant now because of the slow economic recovery. Many companies, he said, remain "cautious and are less aggressive" in making commitments to expand.

"Job participation is still poor. You talk to people on the ground, your friends and neighbors, and they'll tell you that the recovery is slow," he said.

The Myles Standish park is the city's tax property tax provider, producing in excess of $11 million annually, according to Dick Shafer, a part-time project manager for TDC who previously was the city's economic development director.

That amount, he said, includes taxes paid by distribution businesses, which are considered commercial not industrial.

Shafer said the Liberty & Union Industrial Park provides about $1 million in property taxes.

When councilman John McCaul appealed to the City Council in November to adopt a more business-friendly tax ratio, he referred to a statistic mentioned on the radio by Taunton Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Kerrie Babin, in which she noted that the vacancy rate in MSIP had reached 13.6 percent.

Shafer doesn't dispute that the occupancy rate could be better, but he said other industrial parks in the state have had vacancy rates double that of Myles Standish Industrial Park.

The top taxpayer among the two Taunton parks is General Dynamics C-4 Systems. Its two main buildings in MSIP in FY13 generated $685,000 in property taxes.

The runner up is Jordan's Furniture, which, according to the office of the tax treasurer, paid $613,000.

Although he wouldn't provide specifics, Ricciardi said the TDC has taken steps to tighten security within the grounds of phases four and five.

A number of empty Dever buildings on the property in recent years have been torched and burned. The Dever School closed in 2002, but it wasn't until phases four and five were sold for $1 to TDC/MDC that a private security firm left.

When a building, which typically contains asbestos, is burned to the ground, he said it causes a delay for the demolition company hired to take down the building in controlled phases.

To stem the tide of arson and vandalism, Ricciardi said a security firm had been hired to provide rotating shifts of personnel. But he said it's tough to fully prevent trespassers unless a round the clock patrol is provided.

Ricciardi, 54, has been president of TDC for eight years. He said he has volunteered with the group for 15 years.

He's also owner and president of Taunton-based Louis M. Ricciardi Financial Group.

The TDC, he said, is an all-volunteer group that consists mainly of local business people. Sitting members also include the mayor and City Council president. Meetings, he said, are held twice a month.